Merida: Spain's Best-Preserved Roman City

Today, we're going to be taking a look at this magnificent, spectacular Roman ruin, a broken bridge, and we're going to answer the questions. Why is it built here and how was it constructed? So join me for an exclusive look at a forgotten bridge of the Augustan era in the heart of Umbria. Hey, I'm on this little footbridge over the Nanna River. It doesn't look very ferocious. It looked very dangerous today, but back in antiquity, it was a much more substantial artery, and you had to build a bridge over it. So we're here today. We can see the remains of an Augustan bridge. Let's take a look at how it was built, why exactly it was built here, and why so much of it still remains today. With these impressive ruins, you feel like it's apocalyptic. I mean, the end of an era, the end of a civilization. This was the great Augustan-era bridge that was part of the famed Via Flaminia, and the whole purpose of this bridge was to get up to the city on the top of the hill, Narni. Now, there already was a bridge in the Republican era, but under Augustus, under the empire, it was a chance to really take a new look at refurbishing Rome's historic roads. This is a great road that goes from Rome to the north, and it was something that gets revitalized under Augustus, and we can admire these impressive ruins still today. Now, this bridge has undergone recent cleaning, consolidation, but we can still understand the basics of why this bridge was so impressive, and why it was necessary. Because the Nara River was once very, very swollen in the winter months, and it needed substantial bridge to withstand the force of the river. We can see that the exterior is made out of solid blocks of travertine stone. We can see the travertine stone, some of the blocks still here, but the core of it is concrete, and where they haven't consolidated the surfaces, we can still see quite clearly it's opus caementicium, with big aggregate blocks, largely of travertine. So, this is all coming from Tivoli, and then we can see still today, right here, we have the iron clamps that join one block to another block. The reason I love sites like this is that we kind of get the raw details. We get that sense of how they actually build it. We get the sense of Roman engineering. We can look at the Colosseum and see it's pockmarked with holes, where people robbed out the iron clamps. Here, still today, we can see an iron clamp here. We can see another iron clamp here, and another, and another, and we can see little bits of rust. So, the Romans realized that iron is going to oxidize, it's going to rust. So, they cover them in lead, and still today, right here, for example, we can still see portions of the lead that's sealed in the iron clamps. This is the stuff that gets an archaeologist excited, because we can see quite clearly the whole process, the building materials, and why, for the Romans, it's built to last. But, take a look around you here. It's collapsed in the Middle Ages, 9th or 10th century. We still haven't written about in the Gothic Wars in the 6th, but it eventually is not going to withstand earthquakes and the force of the river, because it's not being maintained anymore. And then, it becomes one of those great, fantastic monuments that's on the Grand Tour. This is a place that people came to, rediscovered, appreciated, and it's kind of like at the end of Planet of the Apes, where you get a sense of Armageddon. You get a sense of the hubris of those people, how they built stuff that ultimately did not last the test of time. Rome's a great legacy. Rome's a great empire. We can see the remains, the carcass of that sprawling empire throughout the Mediterranean. Here's one of the examples that we understand just how they are taking engineering to another level. They're building something for the ages. Opus Caementicum. This is our consistent core of our walls, of our large monuments. Now, we can see over here, it's going to be faced with travertine blocks. But let's take a look at this collapsed portion of one of the pillars of that spanning bridge. And what you can see is, they're pouring them in layers. So, I can literally come up here. Here's a pour, here's a pour, here's a pour, here's a pour. So, we have these scenes. This is what's so fantastic about sites like this. We can literally see how they are pouring the concrete. We can see the aggregate work. There's a lot of travertine stone. So, this was, I think, under Augustus, a bridge built for the ages. So, think about that. It's a bridge that's lasting well beyond the empire. Finally, it collapses. We even have one arcade where they put the train line going right through it. So, they didn't decimate that particular arch. There's a lot of great history that's preserved right here at the base of Narni. This is a place that you want to come and explore if you love Roman engineering. We have here the remains of one arcade still standing. This is over 30 meters high. And you had a series of arcades, usually 18, 19 meters. But there's one span that originally was 32 meters across. So, that's an incredible arch that we can imagine then, right here, that's destroyed. The Romans, in the building of the bridges, they were pushing the envelope. And when we think about the different periods in time in which the Romans are going to be building and building big, the Flaminian Road, it's under Augustus, under Flavians, and moves forward in time with various moments in which there are adjustments, there are renovations. But through antiquity, this Augustan bridge was a definitive statement about what they're doing at the beginning of imperial rule under the autocrat, Julius Caesar, and then into Augustus. This is an impressive Augustan monument. I think it still draws a crowd. It still taps into that great tour of the Victorian age, the grand tour. We can still do it today. We can still admire the nature. And all around us here, then we have this lovely, free, accessible public park to really take in, to really drink in, the remains of what once was one of the great bridges of imperial Rome. Look at these monumental ruins. The collapsed bridge in the age of Augustus, here in Umbria. And it really does feel apocalyptic. Remember when Charlton Heston, at the end of The Planet of the Apes, he suddenly comes to the realization that he's not on another planet, but instead he's on Earth. And he curses and he swears, damn you, damn you with the hell. Because he realizes what people did, they ruined his planet, his civilization. When we look around and we see these ruins, we can connect to that reality of there once was a great civilization. There once were these fabulous engineers. They achieved something thousands of years ago that we can only rival in modern terms. And so we think about that and maybe relate to Charlton Heston's character. What did we do? What happened? Why did this empire fall? Hey, this is Darius. Thanks for watching. Thanks for subscribing. I want to take you in the field. I want to take you behind the scenes. I want to show you how things were built, why things lasted, why they fell apart, and why they were built, where they were built throughout the Mediterranean.